People throttled one another on either side of them, guards disemboweling women in beautiful dresses, women in beautiful dresses choking out guards. If there was any time in her life she needed to be a monster, it was now. But she didn’t know who to fight, didn’t understand what was happening, why Hands and Skra seemed to be fighting side by side, painting this ballroom in death in a coordinated attack, when it should have been each other they fought.

A guard wearing a Hand pin swung for Galen. She recognized him—he was one of the guards who’d accompanied Foldrey to Bell’s Corridor. Had risked his own life that day, to save his prince.

Now he sought to end him.

Please, Ranka begged her blood-magic, scraping mental claws against the kernel in her chest. Please!

Galen lurched in front of her, one hand flying up. Wind scooped up the guard and hurled him sideways. He hit the wall with a crack.

They spilled into the hallway. It was a mess of blood and death, too churned together for her to parse individual scents, to know which path was safe.

Four humans wearing pins skidded across the corner to their right. Three Murknen witches appeared in the hallway ahead.

Left it is.

Galen slid his hand into hers.

Together, fingers linked, they ran.

They sprinted together, dodging corpses, skirting unfortunate souls caught in the massacre. A serving boy whimpered, pawing half-heartedly at the spearhead protruding from his stomach. Around the corner an older merchant lay stretched across the tiles, throat slit, shuddering like a gutted fish as her last breaths left her.

Ranka could have screamed. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. All her planning, all the work she’d done. It was all for nothing.

Tile shifted to old wood and drab walls as the sounds of fighting faded behind them. Ranka slowed, heart pounding, sweat dripping off her skin. Galen trembled beside her, his eyes dull with shock. In the back of Ranka’s mind, all she saw was the flash of gold pins and Skra axes, slicing into the bodies of other witches as though they were nothing.

Ranka swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay, Galen, we need to get you out of here. I think we lost them for now—”

“Not quite.”

Tafa stood at the end of the hall. Two more Skra flanked her.

Blood smeared Tafa’s forearms, soaking the white tips of the furs she wore. She was always so vain about them. So careful. Now they were ruined; no matter how long she soaked them, no matter how hard she scrubbed, they’d always carry a blush of pink.

“Ranka.” The wobble in Tafa’s voice betrayed her. “Get out of the way.”

Ranka stepped in front of Galen. “Tafa, listen to me, please. You’re making a mistake. The twins are not our enemy, the Hands are.”